On September 16, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump released a letter announcing a new “pro-life coalition” meant to appeal to anti-choice voters. In response, New York magazine’s Rebecca Traister explained that Trump’s “promises about what he’ll do on abortion” as outlined in his “anti-abortion letter should terrify you.”

In her article, Traister warned that Trump’s announcement was troubling not only for the extreme policies he endorsed, but also because of the news that he has begun recruiting well-known anti-abortion activists to rally voters.

Trump’s letter set out four anti-choice policy priorities: a commitment to uphold the Hyde Amendment, a ban on the allocation of taxpayer funds to abortion services; an assurance that he would nominate “pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court”; a promise to sign “the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” which means a ban on abortion after 20 weeks; and a pledge of “defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions.”

Trump’s announcement also included the news that he had appointed Marjorie Dannenfelser, a longtime anti-abortion leader and president of the anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), to lead the recruitment efforts for his new coalition. As Traister noted, SBA List is an extreme anti-abortion group that “not only opposes abortion in all circumstances, but also several forms of contraception.”

In a press release, NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue repeated these concerns about Dannenfelser and SBA List: “Let’s be clear: just like Donald Trump, Susan B. Anthony List hasn’t done a thing to empower women and everything to advance an extreme agenda that aims to entirely end women’s access to abortion in America, often even for survivors of rape, incest, and women whose health is endangered.”

Traister warned that Trump’s commitments to anti-abortion policy could not “safely be considered electoral posturing” because if elected, Trump would likely have “a Republican congress and Supreme Court seats to fill.” She concluded: Trump “could do every single one of the things he’s promising anti-abortion activists,” and that would make it impossible for women to make decisions “about whether or when to bear children based on their health, their economic, or familial status, or the condition of the fetuses they carry.”

Today’s news has been dominated by the story of the man who spent years hyping racist lies to delegitimize this country’s first black president now betting that a pliable press will congratulate him on distancing himself from himself.

But while this moronic sideshow is going down, a report in the Hill today brings a much more important story: Donald Trump took time out of his busy schedule of conspiracy promotion and disavowal to write a letter to America’s anti-abortion leaders, making some new firm promises about what he’ll do on abortion should he be elected president in 53 days. The missive, dated “September 2016,” was released by the anti-abortion nonprofit Susan B. Anthony List, an organization that not only opposes abortion in all circumstances, but also several forms of contraception, including emergency contraception and copper IUDs (which it has described as causing “early abortions”). The letter begins with Trump’s announcement that he has enlisted longtime anti-abortion leader Marjorie Dannenfelser, SBA List president, as the leader of his campaign’s “Pro-Life Coalition.”

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So this is what he is promising if he becomes president: a court stacked with “pro-life justices” that will make abortion — and judging by the direction of his party, possibly several forms of contraception — illegal; the concretization of a law that makes full access to health care and control over reproduction unavailable to poor Americans; a 20-week rule that would make abortion illegal before the point in gestation at which many fetal abnormalities are diagnosed.

This cannot safely be considered electoral posturing or some wacky new skirmish in a culture war. If Donald Trump is elected president, it will likely be with a Republican congress and Supreme Court seats to fill. He could do every single one of the things he’s promising anti-abortion activists he will do. And those things would return women, in a very real way — in a way that is already happening in state and local jurisdictions around the country — to their secondary status: unable to exert full control over their bodies; barred from making choices about whether or when to bear children based on their health, their economic, or familial status, or the condition of the fetuses they carry.

Donald Trump would like to return us to a nation of forced births, with women’s bodies as the vessels. But by all means, let’s keep yukking it up over his funny orange hair.

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SharonKann
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Sharon Kann is the abortion rights and reproductive health program director at Media Matters, where she has worked since December 2015. She has a master’s degree in communication from Wake Forest University and a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Iowa.